A blog about the shadowy world of law enforcement informants with particular focus on the story of Michigan prison inmate "White Boy Rick" Richard Wershe, Jr. His amazing story compels us to look at many aspects of this underworld of the criminal underworld.

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Sunday, January 31, 2016

At
Rick Wershe’s one and only parole hearing in 2003 the only seemingly
substantive evidence against him was presented by two agents from the Drug
Enforcement Administration—the DEA. Three DEA investigative documents were
presented to the parole board as proving Wershe was a drug lord, a kingpin.
Last August Informant America documented flaws and outright falsity in two
successive blog posts. It’s time to take a look at the third one.

Last August Informant
America documented in a pair of blog posts why the menace-to-society claim
against Richard J. Wershe, Jr. was and is totally false. But there were distractions.
For a time there appeared to be a chance that Rick Wershe was at long last
going to be released from prison. But Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy fought
like hell in the courts to keep him in prison. She did this even though her
office admitted officially in response to my Freedom of Information Act request
for the documents to support the smear against Wershe that they have no records—none—to
support earlier allegations from her office that Wershe was the leader of a
murderous drug organization that reigned supreme in Detroit’s drug underworld
in the late 1980s.

Informant
America has argued there appears to be an official vendetta
against Rick Wershe, crazy as it may sound. In the 1980s he was a white kid in
a mostly black neighborhood who dared to become a paid FBI secret informant
against a black drug gang tied to Detroit Mayor Coleman Young through marriage.
Wershe wound up sleeping with the mayor’s niece and he helped the FBI prosecute
the mayor’s brother-in-law in a major drug case. For good measure, he told on
corrupt cops, too. Since then the “system” has gone to great lengths to keep him
in prison, no matter how much the laws have changed, no matter how many years he has served.

In another blog post, Key‘Witness’ against Wershe denies DEA ‘Lies’, Roy Grisson, Rick Wershe’s one
time pal, said the DEA and Detroit Police narcs tried to “sweat” admissions out
of him after kidnapping him from a hospital where he was recovering from
gunshot wounds from an attempted robbery. The DEA and DPD narcs would later say it was an attempted hit ordered by Rick Wershe. Grisson wouldn’t tell them what they
wanted to hear so they dumped him on a downtown Detroit street. Grisson says he’s
prepared to testify under oath that the DEA report of his “debriefing” is a
fabrication and that any document with his signature is a forgery.

The “debriefing” of discredited informant Terry Colbert
and the “debriefing” of Roy Grisson were two of three DEA investigative reports
presented to the parole board as “evidence” against Rick Wershe. In this post
we will explore the third and final piece of documentation that purports to
prove Rick Wershe’s status as a major domo in Detroit’s drug underworld.

A DEA “6” is the form number for their
investigative reports. This one deals with a purported surveillance that took
place on the night of July 21, 1987. As we will see, there are reasons to
wonder if these events really happened.

The report says Detroit Police narcs Gregory Woods and
Gerard “Mick” Biernacki were conducting a vehicle surveillance with DEA Special
Agent Richard Crock. They liked to call themselves the No Crack Crew.

This DEA-6 report was given to the Michigan Parole Board as part of the evidence that Rick Wershe is a menace to society.

They were watching Kevin Duplessis and Perry Coleman, two
of the key suppliers of cocaine to the infamous Chambers Brothers who truly
were drug barons in that era. The cops followed Duplessis and Coleman from a
pool hall to Rick Wershe’s Video shop on Hayes Street on Detroit’s east side.
Rick Wershe tells me his video shop was popular with everybody in the ‘hood
because it was the only one in that part of the ghetto.He emphasizes he never did any drug business with Perry Coleman. Knowing the guy is not the same as conspiring with him in a criminal enterprise.“Even Demetrius
Holloway would come in to rent movies,” Wershe recalls. In that era the late Holloway
was regarded by many as the godfather of all dope dealers in Detroit. Holloway
was murdered execution-style while buying a pair of socks in a clothing store
about a block from Detroit Police Headquarters.

The surveillance report goes on to say Perry Coleman met
with Rick Wershe, his dad, his friend Roy Grisson and the owner of a car cash
named James Bates, Jr. and Steve ROUSHELL. This is blunder # 1 in the DEA
report. Wershe’s close friend and business partner in the drug game was the
late Steve ROUSELL, not ROUSHELL. Yet the report refers to Rousell as ROUSHELL several
times, indicating it wasn’t just a typo.

The DEA-6 repeatedly lists Rick Wershe's close friend Steve Rousell as Steve ROUSHELL. It wasn't a one-time typo. DEA agent Crock repeatedly mis-typed the name of one of Rick Wershe's close associates. This kind of mistake can and would be challenged in court by a defense attorney as an indication of the unreliability of the report and its writer.

Now, let see: if Rick Wershe, Jr. was a drug kingpin, if
he had a “gang” one would think the DEA agent trying to make a case against
him would know that his crime partner’s name was Rousell—not Roushell. This is
fundamental to building a criminal conspiracy case; knowing the names of the
suspected conspirators. Crock got it wrong but passed this report along to the
Parole Board as part of the opposition to releasing Wershe from prison.

The surveillance report says Steve “Roushell”, Richard
Wershe, Sr. and Dawn Wershe all left the video store location. It states
Wershe, Grisson and another man named Anthony McGee drove off in two vehicles
toward Interstate 94. What follows is a major mistake.

At approximately 9:33 p.m. the two cars “…drove to
Interstate 94 EAST to Interstate 75
North to the Seven Mile Rd. exit. Both vehicles traveled at average speeds of
90 MPH. After exiting on Seven Mile Road, both vehicles proceeded westbound to
San Juan Street, Detroit, Michigan.”

Which way is up? This line in the DEA report of the surveillance of Rick Wershe and some associates indicates the narcs may not know the answer to that question.

Whoa! What’s wrong with this picture? Any Detroiter would
have the answer in an instant. The DEA
report has them going in the wrong direction for their destination.

If you go south on Hayes Street to I-94 and you head East
you will wind up in St. Clair Shores or Mt. Clemens or eventually Port Huron.

Rick Wershe and his associates traveled from Hayes St. on Detroit's East side to San Juan St. on Detroit's Northwest side. The DEA report states they traveled East. If they did they would have wound up in another city, not Detroit.

San Juan Street is on Detroit’s NORTHWEST side. They
would have to go west if they were driving to San Juan Street in Detroit. This is a pretty big, sloppy error in Crock’s report. It
doesn’t stop there.

The DEA report claims Wershe and his associates "averaged" 90 MPH traveling to Detroit's Northwest side. That is a suspicious assertion for several reasons.

“Both vehicles traveled at “average” speeds of 90 MPH.”
Oh yeah? How would narcs in unmarked police surveillance cars know this unless
they put the public at risk by traveling the same speed to clock the cars they
were pursuing?

Agent Crock’s surveillance report states Wershe and his
cohorts arrived at 19300 San Juan at about 9:50 p.m. This makes no sense. I
personally drove the route described in Crock’s DEA-6 and I can tell you at
that time of night you could comfortably make it from 11134 Hayes Street to
19300 San Juan Street in 20 minutes with excessive speeding. If you drove at “average” speeds of 90 MPH
you would arrive sooner than the report states--if you didn't get in a collision on congested 7 Mile Rd.

Before proceeding, it should be noted 19300 San Juan is
the home of Juanita Volsan, the sister of the late Mayor Young. Rick Wershe,
Jr. was having a fling at the time with her daughter, Cathy Curry.

The DEA 6 given to the Michigan Parole Board states the
three men entered Juanita Volsan’s home and “…Richard Wershe, Jr. was carrying
two full (emphasis added) white
shopping bags as witnessed by Officer Woods. Recent intelligence indicates
money is often transported by the Wershe Organization in this manner.”

A narc claiming to see Rick Wershe, Jr. enter the home of Juanita Volsan, the sister of Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, implies she was stashing drug profits for Wershe. There was no raid on Volsan's home after this observation so this smears Ms. Volsan without a shred of evidence, and would have the reader believe Rick Wershe raced across town at 90 MPH with two shopping bags full of cash in his car, just inviting a police search if they were stopped for reckless driving.

So Juanita Volsan gets smeared by innuendo without a
shred of evidence. This implies her home is a stash house for Rick Wershe’s
alleged drug profits. Wershe had two FULL shopping bags. Full of what? We don’t
know and neither do the cops running the surveillance.

Rick Wershe insists Juanita Volsan had nothing to do with
the illegal drug business even though her daughter favored dating drug dealers
and her husband, Willie Clyde Volsan was himself a major drug dealer who was eventually convicted with Rick Wershe's help.

“She was strict,” Wershe told me in a phone call this
past Friday. “She was the total opposite of her daughter. She had no tolerance
for the drug business.” To emphasize his point, Wershe said: “I wouldn’t even
take a gun in her house.”

Wershe makes another point about why the DEA surveillance
report given to the Michigan Parole Board flunks the common sense test.

“If we had two shopping bags full of money in the car
with us would we be driving 90 miles an hour and risk getting stopped by the cops who
might do a car search?”, he asks.

Um, no. Probably not. Permit me to speculate about this
document. I want to emphasize this is speculation.

It may be that this “surveillance” report was cooked up a
few days before Rick Wershe’s 2003 hearing and was not written in the summer of
1987 as the report date suggests.

We know the Wayne County Prosecutor’s office had selected
ranking officers of the Detroit Police Department scrambling to find dirt on Wershe quickly in the days before
the public hearing. Retired Detroit FBI agent John Anthony recalls now-retired
Detroit Police Commander Dennis Richardson called him and seemed “frantic” to
get his hands on files about Wershe. Anthony gave him a stack of newspaper
clippings; no FBI files. The newspaper clippings were given to the Parole Board
at the hearing as more “evidence” against Rick Wershe.

Thus, it is entirely possible that the DEA-6 report 1) linking Wershe to Perry Coleman, a major cocaine supplier for the Chambers
Brothers drug gang and 2) darkly noting he carried two “full” white shopping bags
in to the home of the sister of the mayor of Detroit and implying it may have been illegal drug proceeds may have been cobbled
together in a big hurry in order to present it to the Parole Board as “evidence”
that Rick Wershe is a menace to society.

As reported in the blog posts mentioned earlier,
every single piece of “evidence” given to the Parole Board by DEA agent Crock
and another agent named Greg Anderson, is suspect and should be challenged in
a legal forum.

The Parole Board itself, if it is operating and on the up
and up in Wershe’s case, should insist on a full airing of the facts and
challenges to past assertions. But as Wershe’s attorney Ralph Musilli notes, no
one in the system wants to put a stick of dynamite under THAT manure pile. So
Rick Wershe continues to spend his life in prison while others similarly charged have been set free. He crossed the wrong people.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Why
are so many people in the criminal justice system afraid—scared to death—of holding
a hearing with witnesses and documents, to determine once and for all whether Richard
J. Wershe, Jr.—known as White Boy Rick in the media—is a menace to society who
deserves to remain in prison until he dies? A federal court in Grand Rapids is
among the official entities determined NOT to explore the facts.

If it weren’t for bad luck, Rick Wershe, Jr. wouldn’t have
any luck at all.

He’s had another setback in court. This time it involves
the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan—which covers Grand
Rapids, Michigan and environs. This is not to be confused with his state case. Last
August and September there was a flurry of media coverage of his original state
drug case in Detroit. That issue is now before the Michigan Supreme Court
awaiting a decision.

The Grand Rapids case is different. Wershe is the one doing
the suing in a civil case. I’ll try to avoid lawyer-ese and explain it in
normal people terms.

In 2012 Wershe’s attorney, Ralph Musilli, filed a federal civil
lawsuit against the Michigan Parole Board. It accused the board of violating Wershe’s
constitutional rights by repeatedly refusing to consider him for parole even
though he’s eligible due to changes in Michigan’s drug laws. What used to be a
mandatory life sentence for possession of large amounts of cocaine has been
changed to parolable-life. That is, after a certain portion of the sentence is
served, the inmate is eligible for parole at the discretion of the state parole
board.

Originally Rick Wershe, Jr. was sentenced in 1988 to life
in prison without parole for possession of 17 pounds of cocaine. As Informant America has explained in
previous posts, Wershe had been recruited by the FBI at age 14 to become a
confidential informant against the Curry Brothers, a rising cocaine
organization on Detroit’s east side. They recruited a 14-year old because he
was known and trusted by the Currys as one of the kids from the neighborhood. He
did a good job informing on the Curry organization. He also told FBI agents on
a federal drug task force about police drug corruption, too. That led to a
lifetime of trouble for Wershe.

In the minds of many cops a drug trafficker is a lowlife
cockroach but a police informer who tells on dirty cops who are on the take
from drug dealers is even more contemptible. Frequently, but not always, the
cops on the take are narcs, narcotics officers, plainclothes cowboys who are
often held in high regard in police circles. In most cases at least some of
their fellow cops know these guys are dirty. But in that line of work, you
never, ever rat on your own. If you are an honest cop you are supposed to look
the other way. The pressure in police departments to ignore corruption is
enormous. Just ask Frank Serpico, a famous ex-New York City narc. There was a
movie about him, starring Al Pacino, and it featured a tagline that was not
only memorable but insightful in terms of American law enforcement really works:

“Many
of his fellow officers considered him the most dangerous man alive. An honest
cop.”

Previous posts on Informant
America have discussed the police corruption surrounding the Rick Wershe,
Jr. case. There are strong reasons to believe Wershe remains in prison long
after he was eligible for parole because there is an ongoing law
enforcement/prosecution vendetta against him. The Michigan Parole Boards’
refusal year in and year out to give Wershe serious consideration for parole is
the basis for suing them in federal court. It is a denial of his Constitutional
rights, the lawsuit claims. The Wershe lawsuit argues it is a violation of his
right to due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and his right
under the Eighth Amendment to be free of cruel and unusual punishment.

U.S. District Court Judge Gordon Quist-Western District of Michigan

Initially, U.S. District judge Gordon Quist dismissed the
case as frivolous litigation and

threatened Ralph Musilli, Wershe’s attorney,
with a fine.

Musilli appealed to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of
Appeals. The appellate court issued an opinion in August, 2014. They agreed the
due process part of the case didn’t have merit but they remanded, or sent, the
case back to Judge Quist telling him he made a mistake "...because the district court failed to consider the impact of
Wershe’s youth at the time of the crime and his arrest." Wershe was 17
when he was arrested, 18 when he went to prison for life. The appeals court
said Quist had not considered how a U.S. Supreme Court decision called Graham-v- Florida applied to the Wershe
parole matter. That 2010 decision said juveniles convicted in non-homicide
cases cannot be sentenced to life without parole.

The case has been sitting on
the docket in Grand Rapids since August, 2014 without any action on the Court
of Appeals opinion and order.

Recently, a Grand Rapids federal magistrate, reviewing the
case for Judge Quist, concluded the Supreme Court’s Graham decision does not apply to the Wershe case because the
Michigan criminal drug law was changed to life with parole. This totally ignores the facts—or lack of them—in the
Wershe case. Five times since 2003 the Michigan Parole Board has refused to consider
Wershe for parole. As a former parole board member observed, they are
perpetuating his life sentence five years at a time. The magistrate, on the
other hand, focused solely on the change in Michigan law, which in his view,
satisfies the requirements of the Graham
decision by the Supreme Court.

The federal magistrate, Ray Kent, recommended the Wershe
civil suit be terminated. What he has done is give Judge Quist “cover” for
avoiding the issues in the Wershe matter. The judge can dismiss Wershe’s
lawsuit and say something like, “I’m following the recommendations of a federal magistrate who
has thoroughly reviewed the matter.”

Well, no, he didn’t. The magistrate did no such thing. A fair
review would have recommended that Musilli be allowed what is called discovery.
That’s a court-authorized fact-finding effort. Claims by the State of Michigan
that there are no facts to be discovered are totally bogus. Full
court-authorized discovery might lead to all sorts of stinky things,
shenanigans at the Parole Board, witnesses who lied and misled the Board at
Rick’s 2003 hearing, and possible evidence of a long-running conspiracy to deny
Rick Wershe his rights as retribution for informing on public corruption, as
this blog has been reporting on for months. So why is the federal court in
Grand Rapids going out of its way to avoid fact-finding in the Wershe case?

“That’s like putting a stick of dynamite under a pile of
manure,” Musilli says. Very true.

Magistrate Kent’s
extremely narrow focus on parolable life versus non-parolable life ignores the
essential argument in the Wershe lawsuit. The validity of the Wershe sentence
is not the issue. The issue is the fairness of keeping a man in prison for 28
years for a non-violent drug crime committed as a juvenile, when every other
Michigan inmate charged under similar circumstances has been paroled. That sure
sounds like unusual punishment as described in the U.S. Constitution. They've
released all of the Michigan juvenile drug offenders who were given life
sentences except one—Rick Wershe.

And there are
outrageous circumstances in this case of a juvenile who was sentenced to life
in prison. Wershe, then a teenager, got involved with drugs only after law enforcement
(the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force—OCDETF—task force) taught him
the drug trade so he could be a better confidential informant. Federal agents
and local police narcs taught him how to be a dope dealer. Furthermore, certain
law enforcement/prosecution parties have made a determined effort to mislead
the parole board regarding this guy's level of activity in the drug trade. It
can be argued this official smear was done to ensure he remained in prison as
payback for snitching on corrupt cops and the brother-in-law of the late mayor
of Detroit.

Factual
misrepresentations to the parole board have kept this man in prison unfairly.
He has a false, fabricated reputation (White Boy Rick) that is used as a reason
for keeping him in prison until he dies. This is more about retribution, about
the abuse of the criminal justice system, than about which case law applies.

The systemic vendetta
against Wershe is amazing. Contract murderers—hitmen—have been incarcerated,
done time, and have been paroled in the time Wershe has been in prison. The
State of Michigan and Wayne County have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid
a full hearing on the question of whether this guy deserves to remain in prison
long after others similarly charged have been paroled. They simply will not
budge even in the face of challenges to the "evidence" presented in
2003.

It is a no-win
situation for Wershe because, among other things, a commutation under Gov.
Snyder is totally dependent upon the Parole Board that has steadfastly refused
for years to grant him a new parole hearing. Snyder says he will rely on the
Parole Board to "advise" him on a commutation for Wershe. So Snyder
has tossed the matter back to an entity that is denying this guy his
Constitutional rights. There is no way they will recommend a commutation. The
practical result is Wershe has no rights. None.

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Bizarre
new revelations following the arrest last week in Mexico of supreme drug lord
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman can be enlightening for those interested in the
Michigan imprisonment of Richard J. Wershe, Jr., and for those who believe the
War on Drugs is a costly farce. Wershe has no ties to or association with any
Mexican drug cartel but the way he’s been treated in the War on Drugs is in
stark contrast to the shenanigans south of the border.

When humorist Dave Barry was writing his regular syndicated
column about nutty things people do, one of his recurring lines was, “I swear
I’m not making this up.”

I thought about that as I sat down to write this week’s Informant America blog post. Like Dave
Barry, I swear I’m not making this up.

Last weekend, the media was abuzz with word that Mexico’s
(and the world’s) Number One drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman had been
captured—again—by Mexican special forces in a bloody raid.

Joaquin El Chapo Guzman-Back in custody again. (Photo-NBC News)

Guzman had humiliated the Mexican government by escaping
from prison—twice. Those prison breaks alone show the “War on Drugs” is a
pitiful joke, but wait! There’s more!

Mexican authorities said the raid that snared Guzman was
the result of an informant’s tip.

But the next day Rolling Stone magazine came out with an exclusive interview with El
Chapo by movie actor, sometime-activist and wannabe journalist Sean Penn. The
Mexican government quickly shifted PR gears and said they knew all about the
actor’s secret interview with Guzman in a Mexican jungle in October and that
the interview led to El Chapo’s capture. They have yet to explain why, if they
knew about the October interview, it took them from October to January
recapture the fugitive Guzman.

The RollingStone/Sean
Penn interview with Guzman, who was the world’s most wanted man, turns out to
have been brokered by a sexy Mexican soap opera actress Guzman was hot to meet
and woo. She had posted a comment on social media saying she thought Guzman was
more truthful than the Mexican government. The drug kingpin was flattered and
reached out to her through intermediaries to say he wanted to meet her to
discuss a biopic movie about himself. The actress, Kate del Castillo,
apparently seeing a career opportunity, contacted Sean Penn about Guzman’s desire
to have a movie made about himself. A secret meeting was arranged for October
in a jungle region of western Mexico.

Guzman and del Castillo had exchanged flirty text messages
as the meeting was being set up. A Mexican newspaper obtained transcripts of
the texts.

Guzman: “You’re the
best in this world. … I’ll take care of everything so you’re comfortable. I
will take care of you more than I do my own eyes."

del Castillo: "I
am so moved to hear that you will take care of me. No one has ever taken care of
me."

Later
that day Guzman exchanged text messages with his lawyer.

Lawyer:
“… she wants to bring along actor Sean Penn…. curious fact, he is the most
renowned actor in Hollywood.”

An
hour later Guzman sent another text to his lawyer.

Guzman:
“What’s the name of that actor again?”

Lawyer:
“Sean Penn.”

Sean What's-His-Name. He says his Rolling Stone interview of drug lord Joaquin Guzman failed because it didn't spark a national discussion of the War on Drugs. (Photo-60Minutes)

El Chapo made some interesting preparations for his planned
meeting with Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo. Even though Mexican authorities
were supposedly conducting an intense, nationwide manhunt looking everywhere
for him, sometime last September Guzman went to Tijuana, the border city
adjacent to San Diego, and had erectile dysfunction surgery. The procedure was
a new one involving a testicle implant which reportedly improves blood flood to
the penis. The procedure required a general anesthetic but for some reason
Guzman was not worried about getting captured while his balls were under the
knife. He had the procedure and left Tijuana with some pain meds and pills for
erectile dysfunction even though he had just had surgery for that problem.
Apparently he wasn’t leaving anything to chance. He wanted to ensure he was up
for the meeting a few weeks later with Kate del Castillo. Oh, and Guzman
intended to be cordial to that American actor—what’s his name—Sean Penn.

In October Guzman shared tacos and tequila with Penn and
del Castillo at a jungle hideaway and gave Penn a self-serving interview. The
Mexican federales, Mexican special forces and their pals in the DEA were
nowhere to be seen and Guzman remained on the lam.

I am not making this up.

It’s important to remember: the story of El Chapo is part
of the U.S. War on Drugs. We’ve spent a trillion dollars and 45 years waging
this modern version of Prohibition with the same level of success. The U.S. has the finest spy satellites and
electronic intercept equipment in the world. U.S. spy satellites have long had the ability to see, from
thousands of miles in space, the headlines on a newspaper being read by someone
on a park bench on the ground.

The DEA and CIA have stunning electronic eavesdropping
spyware in their arsenal. IMSI—International Mobile Subscriber Identity—devices
can suck all the data from a targeted cell phone using a little box attached to
a light pole. Yet, somehow, the warriors of the War on Drugs couldn’t find
Joaquin El Chapo Guzman while he was just across the border in Tijuana having
surgery for erectile dysfunction.

Some cynics and conspiracy buffs say that’s because the
U.S. has been allowing Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel to continue doing business in
exchange for actionable intelligence on rival Mexican drug cartels.

In 2014 a major Mexican newspaper, El Universal, reported
the DEA had cut a deal with the Sinaloa cartel to continue shipping tons of
cocaine to the United States in exchange for information the narcs could use to
shut down rival Mexican cartels.

That seems a bit far-fetched but it is known that the DEA
flipped one of Guzman’s top lieutenants and turned him into a snitch. Vicente
Zambada-Niebla’s work as a DEA informant had to be known and tolerated by El
Chapo, who is responsible for thousands of drug murders in Mexico as head of
the Sinaloa cartel. Zambada-Niebla’s information presumably helped the DEA make
some key arrests in exchange for favorable treatment in the courts. For El
Chapo Guzman Zambada-Niebla’s work as a snitch for the DEA meant getting rid of
some of the competition.

DEA’s kid-glove handling of Zambada-Niebla, who has been
involved in massive, ton-level drug smuggling stands in stark contrast to the
DEA’s treatment here in the U.S. of Richard J. Wershe, Jr. who has been
described as perhaps the FBI’s most valuable informant in Detroit in terms of
prosecutable cases. In fact, Wershe was so valuable the FBI, for a time, had
Wershe in WitSec—the federal Witness Security program.

That may be part of the reason why Wershe remains in prison
serving a life sentence when others in Michigan charged for similar crimes have
been paroled. He was working for the FBI, not the DEA. The rivalry and
competition between the FBI and DEA runs wide and deep ever since Congress gave
the Bureau concurrent jurisdiction in the War on Drugs. The two most powerful
federal law enforcement agencies are locked in competition to make big cases
which help secure ever larger budgets.

When Wershe was put in the WitSec program he was moved to a
federal prison outside Phoenix, Arizona. There he was housed with an array of
headline-making inmates. The common denominator was they all had helped the
Justice Department win major cases. Among Wershe’s fellow inmates in Phoenix
were Carlos Lehder and Steve Kalish.

Carlos Lehder, one of the notorious drug lords of the Colombian Medellin Cartel. He and Rick Wershe were in prison together for a time.

You may remember Carlos Lehder. He was one of the founders
of the legendary Medellin Cartel in Colombia. He was captured in 1987, the same year the
DEA was helping Detroit Police narcs build a case against Rick Wershe. Some say
a rival drug lord, the late Pablo Escobar, was the snitch who tipped the DEA
and Colombian narcs on where to find Lehder. He was tried in the United States
and sentenced to life without parole plus 135 years.

That didn’t last long. Lehder soon turned snitch himself
and cut a deal with the Justice Department to testify against Panama’s leader,
Manuel Noriega, who had also been busted for drug trafficking and had been brought
to the United States for trial. Lehder’s sentence was reduced to 55 years and
he was put in the WitSec program along with Rick Wershe.

One of Wershe’s fellow WitSec inmates was a preppy-looking
drug trafficker named Steve Kalish

Steve Kalish-he bribed Panama's Manuel Noriega, got busted, then testified against Noriega in exchange for a sentence reduction. In other words, he became another high profile snitch. Rick Wershe said Kalish made a stock market fortune while they were in prison together.

Steve Kalish, along with Leigh Ritch and Michael Vogel of
Michigan, established a massive, thriving marijuana smuggling operation that
began with ocean-borne smuggling and eventually took to the air with the help
of CIA pilots who were flying guns to the Contras in Nicaragua and flying back
under CIA protection with cargo planes loaded with bales of marijuana. Does the
Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan years ring a bell? This was part of it. But
the DEA wasn’t involved in this investigation. It was an FBI case. Kalish,
Ritch and Vogel were all prosecuted and sent to prison.

The Kalish-Ritch-Vogel organization had bribed Panama’s
Manuel Noriega to facilitate their smuggling operation. They even bought
Noriega a jet for his personal use. All of this was documented in a series of
hearings by then-Senator John Kerry. Kalish, like Carlos Lehder, rolled over
and became a government witness against Panama’s Noriega. Kalish got his
sentenced reduced and he wound up in the same Arizona WitSec unit as Lehder and
Rick Wershe.

Rick Wershe tells me he remembers Lehder liked to talk about the
costs and profits of the drug smuggling business. Kalish, on the other hand,
busied himself playing the stock market using a satellite-linked device he was
allowed to have in his cell. Hey. You help the U.S. government make a big,
politically-potent drug case, you get all kinds of breaks. Kalish, by all
accounts, has a good head for business. Wershe believes Kalish made a fortune
in the stock market while doing time in prison. He’s now out.

While Wershe was in the WitSec program in Arizona, a pair
of Detroit DEA agents came to visit. They begged him to come back to Detroit
and testify before a federal grand jury investigating the Best Friends
murder-for-hire drug gang. Wershe agreed to help the DEA. He was flown back to
Detroit where he remembers Assistant U.S. Attorney James King promising he
would go “balls to the wall” to help Wershe with his state life prison sentence
if he would just help the DEA and the Detroit U.S. Attorney’s office nail the
Best Friends organization. Wershe kept his end of the bargain. He testified
against the Best Friends, who were convicted. King didn’t keep his end of the
bargain. As near as can be determined he did nothing to help Wershe with his
state conviction.

Eventually the DEA rewarded Wershe for his help with the
Best Friends case by permitting two agents to testify AGAINST his parole in a
2003 hearing. The U.S. Attorney’s office rewarded him, Wershe says, by leaking
his sealed grand jury testimony to the Wayne County prosecutor’s office. Wershe
believes that information was used against him in questioning at his 2003
parole hearing, despite a signed agreement from an assistant United States
Attorney promising the information provided by him would not be used against
him. Interestingly, three former Detroit FBI agents testified in Wershe's behalf and urged his release on parole at that 2003 hearing. So there were three FBI agents testifying FOR Rick Wershe and two DEA agents testifying AGAINST Rick Wershe. Apparently no one on the Michigan Parole Board thought this was strange and worthy of further inquiry. A transcript of that hearing reads like a proceeding in a kangaroo court.

One of the witnesses at the 2003 parole hearing, former
Detroit Police Homicide Inspector William Rice has signed a sworn affidavit stating
he was shown Wershe’s sealed grand jury testimony in preparation for his
testimony against Wershe at the parole hearing.

If true, this was a felony. Leaking court-sealed grand jury
testimony is a crime. Of course, no one can be prosecuted now because the
statute of limitations is long past. And no one, including the federal courts, seems interested in finding out what the hell happened.

So Rick Wershe remains in prison, beginning his 28th
year behind bars. Steve Kalish is in Texas living off the stock market fortune
he made while in prison with Wershe. Carlos Lehder is believed to be in prison somewhere in the WitSec program.

The DEA is doing heaven-knows-what in Mexico where the
world’s top drug kingpin got sex enhancement surgery without getting caught by
the Mexican federals and the DEA. Talk about impotence.

Maria Teresa Osario de Serna - she has replaced Joaquin Guzman as the DEA's Most Wanted.

Guzman is back in prison—for now. He’s been replaced on the
DEA’s International Most Wanted list by a mysterious Colombian woman named Maria
Teresa Osorio de la Serna who is reputed to be a world-class money launderer
for the drug cartels. She either lives in Colombia or Hileah, Florida. The DEA
isn’t sure which.

Meanwhile, Sean Penn is on 60 Minutes tonight complaining
his big scoop interview with Joaquin El Chapo Guzman “failed” because it didn’t
spark a national debate on the War on Drugs.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

For
nearly a year Informant America has been revealing the criminal justice system deceptions,
misrepresentations and outright lies about Richard J. Wershe, Jr. He’s lived
for nearly three decades under the libel and slander that he was a drug lord
and drug kingpin. Law enforcement mendacity isn’t unique to Rick Wershe. This
weekend the papers have featured front-page news about the capture (re-capture)
of the world’s most notorious drug dealer. Like the Rick Wershe story, if you
look closely, something’s not right about the official story.

You can’t make this stuff up. That popular aphorism
certainly applies to events this weekend in the endless War on Drugs.

In case you haven’t heard, there was news out of Mexico
on Friday that drug cartel kingpin and serial prison escapee Joaquin “El Chapo”
Guzman was captured by Mexican Navy special forces in a deadly pre-dawn raid in
Los Mochis, a city on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Five people died in the firefight
surrounding the operation.

"Mission accomplished: we have him. I want to inform
Mexicans that Joaquín Guzmán Loera has been arrested," Peña Nieto, the
President of Mexico tweeted. Guzman is widely regarded as the most powerful
drug trafficker in the world. He is the head of the Sinaloa cartel and is
reputed to have a net worth of one billion dollars.

Just like George W. Bush’s famous 2003 “mission
accomplished” claim regarding the war in Iraq, the “mission accomplished” Guzman
capture story is not what it appears on the surface. And just like the
premature Bush proclamation of victory in Iraq, the capture of Guzman hardly
qualifies as “mission accomplished” in the 40-year war on drugs.

The Mexican government told reporters the arrest of
Guzman was the result of a tip—more “success” as the result of a tip from an
informant! But like the saga of Rick Wershe, Jr. there is a lot more to the
Guzman capture than the authorities are admitting.

Actor Sean Penn found El Chapo when the entire army of the War on Drugs couldn't. (Rolling Stone)

On Saturday, the day after the Guzman capture, Rolling Stone magazine came out with an
exclusive interview with the Mexican drug lord obtained by movie actor Sean
Penn last October. The Mexican government shifted gears and told the Associated
Press the Sean Penn interview led to Guzman’s capture.

There is no link between Joaquin Guzman and Rick Wershe,
Jr. except this: the official line about this guy doesn’t stand up to close
scrutiny. Law enforcement didn’t tell the truth about Wershe in the late 1980s.
We are now in the first month of 2016 and once again we are not getting a
straight story from the front lines of the War on Drugs.

Consider recent history: El Chapo—Shorty— Guzman was the
most wanted man in the world after his bold escape from a Mexican prison
through an elaborate and costly tunnel constructed under the prison by his
associates. It was his second prison escape. In the international drug trafficking
trade Guzman was first among equals, the most powerful drug trafficker in the
world.

Mexican authorities assisted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration and American’s considerable electronic eavesdropping technology
could not find the fugitive drug dealer. Stories surfaced in the media that
Guzman had fled to Guatemala where he was re-establishing his drug empire.

But Sean Penn managed to find him, with the help of
Mexican actress Kate del Castillo who has played the role of a drug dealer on a
Mexican soap opera. She also tweeted support for Guzman in the past.
Apparently, El Chapo noticed and got the bright idea of brokering a biopic
movie about himself. Through intermediaries he contacted the actress who
contacted Sean Penn who flew to Mexico and met with Guzman in a jungle hideout
where they shared tacos and tequila. Some reports say Guzman was keen to meet
the glamorous Mexican actress as part of the process.

There was even video of Joaquin Guzman answering
questions with a rooster crowing in the background. As noted at the start of
this post, you can’t make this stuff up.

Attorneys and film industry production professionals got
involved in the “secret” negotiations and concluded a biopic about Guzman might
be too difficult to produce. The interview with Penn for Rolling Stone was the alternative.

If Sean Penn’s interview with Guzman led to his arrest,
why did it take from October, when the interview was done, to early January to
make the arrest? Where have Mexican authorities been all this time? Is it coincidence the Mexican special forces just
happened to find Guzman the day before the Rolling
Stone article was published? Did Rolling
Stone rush the publication of the article because of the arrest? Why did
the Mexican government change its story from one day to the next about how the
arrest went down?

Whatever the truth is about the Joaquin Guzman manhunt
and capture, we don’t know it. Whatever the truth is about Rick Wershe, Jr.,
the reputed drug lord and kingpin we don’t know it, at least not completely.
Bits and pieces are coming in to focus as the War on Drugs slogs forward and Wershe continues his life sentence while others similarly charged have been paroled. "Officials" have steadfastly refused to explain why Wershe should be treated differently. What we know is that Wershe helped the FBI prosecute corrupt cops and the brother-in-law of the late mayor of the City of Detroit.

If the War on Drugs weren’t so tragic it would be funny.
That brings us to a weekend Hollywood awards show.

In the Golden Globes awards Sunday night, host Ricky
Gervais zinged Penn and his Guzman interview in his opening monologue. The
British comedian said he wanted to finish his opening segment then go in to
hiding “where not even Sean Penn can find me.” He followed with a dig at Penn.
“Snitch,” Gervais called him.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

For
nearly a year Informant America has been documenting the falsity of the legend
that Richard J. Wershe, Jr. was a drug lord and kingpin in Detroit’s criminal
underworld in the late 1980s. The myth has persisted for nearly 30 years. It
has calcified and turned to stone. Perhaps 2016 will be the year that the
legend of White Boy Rick dies and the man, Richard J. Wershe, Jr., finally gets
justice and release from his life prison term.

There’s an old saying; the more things change the more
they stay the same. The credit for that observation goes to Jean-Baptiste
Alphonse Karr, a French journalist and commentator in the 1800s.

That’s certainly true of police corruption in the costly
fiasco we call the War on Drugs.

Over the holidays Detroit
News police beat reporter George Hunter wrote a story about an attempt on
the life of a federal informant who provided evidence against two Detroit narcs
who are under indictment for stealing drugs from drug dealers and giving the
contraband to selected DPD informants to sell. The federal informant was shot
while driving on a Detroit freeway. Hunter reports the informant against the indicted
cops and other witnesses have been relocated for their safety.

The indicted police officers, Lt. David “Hater” Hansberry
and Bryan “Bullet” Watson are accused of robbing Detroit drug dealers and
keeping the drugs which they allegedly gave to favored informants to sell.

This kind of thing is not new. It has been going on for
decades. In street jargon it is known as tippin’ and rippin’. Corrupt cops “tip
over” or raid a suspected drug house and steal or rip off the drugs they find.
The raid is off the books. There’s no court-authorized search warrant, there’s
no evidence trail or paperwork filed. Officially the raid never happened. It is
armed robbery by the police, plain and simple. It’s done by narcs sworn to
uphold the law. Guys who swagger around cop bars bragging they are on the front
line of law and order.

Regular readers of Informant
America may recall a recent (October 25, 2015) post titled Rick Wershe and the Police Culture of Lying.
In that post I wrote about retired FBI Special Agent Herm Groman’s
recollection of attending a police party on Detroit’s Belle Isle for a narc who
was getting transferred. Groman was Rick Wershe’s FBI “handler” during most of
the years Wershe was working as a confidential informant or CI.

The Detroit
narc who was the guest of honor at the party was known by the nickname Popeye
and his “present” from his fellow narcotics officers was a shirt with numerous
extra pockets sewn on it. The joke was based on Popeye’s reputation for
routinely helping himself to fists full of cash he found during narcotics
raids; money he did not turn in as evidence in the aftermath of the raid.
Popeye was a thief and his buddies and pals in the Detroit Police Narcotics
Section knew it. And they looked the other way as they have done so many times
over the years when faced with corruption among their fellow officers.

That same post recounted how the late
Gerard “Mick” Biernacki, a member of the team that made the drug case against
Rick Wershe was known among other cops as “Pinocchio” for his habit of lying
under oath in court. Biernacki was legendary for making up whatever he thought would convince a judge and jury. The nickname Pinocchio was based upon a
wooden puppet in a famous children’s fairy tale. Pinocchio's nose would grow every time
he told a lie. Like the narcs who looked the other way when Popeye would steal
money during crack house raids, the narcs who worked with Biernacki looked the
other way when he committed perjury, which is a felony. Presumably a cop who commits
a felony in the pursuit of law and order is somehow morally superior to the
civilian criminals he arrests and sends to prison with perjured testimony. Some
people can rationalize anything.

These were two tales of police corruption in the 1980s.

Another Informant
America post, Rick Wershe Jr. and the
10th Precinct Conspiracy recalled a Detroit police narcotics corruption
case from the 1970s and noted the parallels between that scandal and the police
corruption encountered by Rick Wershe, Jr. when he was working secretly for the
FBI.

A team of Detroit narcs from the 10th
Precinct were indicted and tried on charges of corruption. The leader of the
precinct narcotics crew was Sgt. Rudy Davis, who was eventually convicted and
sent to prison. The headline of a April 29, 1973 Detroit Free Press profile of Rudy Davis read: "No. 1 Raider's Sideline: Selling Dope to Pushers."

Former Detroit Police Sgt. Rudy Davis (Detroit Free Press photo)

The accusations against Sgt, Davis in the 1970s were
remarkably similar to the charges in 2015 against Lt. Hansberry and Officer
Watson.

Yet the public is supposed to believe some Detroit narcs when they claim Richard J. Wershe, Jr. was a drug “kingpin” and a “drug
lord” who is a menace to society and should remain behind bars for the rest of
his life. In numerous posts last year Informant America has shown there is no
factual evidence behind the legend of White Boy Rick Wershe, Jr. It’s a pile of
lies intended to make him out to be something he never was. There is ample
reason to believe the Detroit/Wayne County upholders of criminal “justice”
concocted the White Boy Rick myth to justify keeping him in prison for life for
helping the FBI prosecute Mayor Coleman Young’s brother-in-law and some
politically wired cops. Rick Wershe is not innocent and never claimed to be.
But he’s telling the truth when he says some narcs flat-out lied about his role
in the Detroit drug underworld. And Wershe is right to wonder why so many
people in today’s criminal “justice” system are working so hard to keep him in
prison when others similarly charged have been released on parole.

Let me add one final note to begin the New Year. I am not
anti-cop. Anyone who knows me knows that. My oldest son is a federal agent. One
of my grandsons is in a training academy to become a police officer. I have
been the emcee at countless police retirement parties. Cops have been guests in
my home many times. They’ve eaten my food. They’ve guzzled my booze. Some are
life-long friends. The trouble with me, for some cops, is that I’m a true
believer in law-and-order. I believe there is a reason we put the word “law”
ahead of the word “order.” I believe following the law and not breaking the law
is what separates the good guys from the bad guys. A cop or prosecutor who
commits a felony to make a case against a bad guy is just another felon in my
book. They all deserve to go to prison.

Prosecution and justice are not interchangeable words. In
the case of Richard J. Wershe, Jr. he’s been prosecuted but he hasn’t had any
justice. Maybe 2016 will be different.

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About Me

My name is Vince Wade. I am an independent/freelance investigative reporter, writer, narrator, multimedia producer and director.
I live near the beach in a city outside Los Angeles.
I started in radio news but I spent most of my career at network-affiliated TV stations in Detroit, Michigan where I covered crime, the courts, public corruption and various scandals. I’ve won over 20 awards including three Emmys, 1st Place for TV News documentary at the New York International Film Festival, plus wire service reporting awards and others.
I work on topics and projects that interest me and stories that need to be told.